Letter from the President 

Many years ago, in October 1977, and shortly after beginning a new job at Manchester University, I attended a meeting at which a vastly experienced educational psychologist (EP), for whom I had the greatest respect, was the principal speaker. In his talk he suggested that, on balance, when a child was referred to an educational psychologist more harm than good resulted - for the child, the family and the school! This observation came to me as something of a shock. Surely, I reflected, as a member of one of the so called "helping professions" all EPs had a commitment to help children, schools and families. After all, this was one of the main reasons for becoming an EP in the first place. If my colleague was right, and our work caused harm to the very people we wanted to help, then I was living a professional lie, deluding myself that I was actually doing some good when in all probability the opposite was the case. This had fundamental ethical implications for EP practice and for me personally as a newly appointed co-director of a professional training course for EPs.

My first reaction was to challenge my colleague and to put up a vigorous refutation of his proposition. Although I was still a relatively inexperienced EP, my overriding impression was that, despite initial and understandable reservations, parents and children felt that they had benefited from seeing an EP, at the very least being reassured that someone understood their problems and that something was being done about them. Teachers also appeared to seek the EP's opinion and demand for their services continued to grow.

So why did my colleague think that EPs did more harm than good? His reasons centred on the debate about paradigms that underpin professional practice in the helping professions. At the time EPs tended to rely exclusively on the medical model to inform their practice. Children were referred because something was »wrong« with them that needed fixing. The EP, primarily through carrying out a series of psychometric tests, attempted to explore aspects of mental functioning that might help to find out more about what was wrong with the child and to offer an explanation. Therefore they would test the child's IQ, consider the profile of abilities that emerged and make suggestions about the implications for intervention. The referral process itself encouraged this way of working. After all it was the child who was referred, not the parent or the school. Hence the EP was expected to assess the child individually, often in a separate room, and to write a report on him or her, frequently recommending that the child should be placed in a special school.

This medical model, it was argued, focused everyone's attention exclusively on the child and explanations for problems that he or she was experiencing lay within his head - e.g., he was educational subnormal, mentally handicapped or maladjusted. This approach ignored the contribution that the school or the family might have had towards causing the problem and to finding solutions within their own resources. The fact that children, (not families or schools) were referred was in itself potentially disempowering. Hence children's vulnerability was exploited further through the referral process. My colleague argued forcibly that the medical model had the potential to reinforce bad practice, particularly in schools which in many cases were the principal cause of the problem. By focusing on the child and removing him or her to a special school, EPs were not addressing the fundamental problem of how to help the schools improve the way they supported all children. Removing those who caused them problems simply encouraged schools to carry on as before. Furthermore my colleague felt that special schools were not effective in helping children to overcome their problems. In particular the stigmatising impact of having to be bussed to a special school signaled the child out as being different, and separated him from his local community.

In 1977 these arguments were quite new to me and, I suspect, to many of my EP colleagues. They have, of course been well articulated by several authors over the years and now, in particular, form the centre piece of the present debates about inclusive education. In my view the way EPs currently approach their work has been greatly influenced by discussions around the relative merits of the medical and social models. We are mindful of the impact that schools can have in creating and solving problems and about the need to encourage teachers to take greater ownership of the task of teaching all children for whom they are responsible.

My reason for using this letter to reflect on the comments made by my colleague in 1977 is to pose some difficult and uncomfortable questions. In 2004, mindful of the well worked arguments about the pitfalls of adopting a medical model, is our practice alert to the dangers? Do we always advocate for children? Do we strive to work with schools as organisations so that they can improve their inclusive practices for the benefit of all children? Or is it tempting to withdraw to the comfortable world of the medical model and focus our efforts exclusively on the child? I like to think that school psychology has moved on over the last 25 years and that we now adopt a more socially orientated approach to our work. Indeed, in the UK, there is abundant evidence that EPs are working more in this way particularly through adopting a consultation model in their work with schools and in playing an increasingly important role in the inservice training of teachers.

However, we need to be vigilant! All of us are committed to helping children to prosper throughout the world - indeed this is a key mission for ISPA. I believe that my colleague was wrong, and school and educational psychologists do make a positive difference for children, schools and families. However his arguments are important, they have been articulated by others and there is an extensive literature supporting his views. Hence all of us need to continually reflect on our practice so as to ensure that we really do work in the best interests of children.

These arguments about effective practice for school psychologists will, of course, form the centre piece of papers and presentations at the forthcoming colloquium in Exeter this summer. We have already received over fifty offers to present a paper, symposia or workshop from school psychologists in many different countries. I am confident that they will provide a stimulus for lively and interesting debates. I hope to see you there!

Happy New Year.

Peter Farrell, President of ISPA